Two-faced techno people in the Balkans, and future of our editorial content

Written on 23.09.2022 by Andrijan Apostoloski

In post-pandemic world, I hoped for things to become better in the techno sphere, as I believed people would finally appreciate what we’ve lost for years in the isolation. But in my eyes, the opposite has happened — the “techno scene” is going all bonkers with these headlining festivals, Instagram DJs are becoming more and more prevalent, the divide between quality and like/follower quantity is becoming bigger and bigger, etc. There are exceptions to this, but this is the general picture right now, techno is sadly cooler (or trendier) than ever before. The underground is mainstream.

Let’s dive in locally in the Balkans now: From the very start in 2011 we aimed to support every underground artist, sound and movement that appeared here. DIY punk, boom-bap rap, all kinds of experimental stuff in every genre which was quality… Me and the team of talented writers who consisted of genuinely passionate people in music, who came and go as years went by did everything we could to bring the curious alternative folks a place where they could get informed on events, releases, and have this online place where everything happening in the underground world is at their fingertips. This platform has been involved with techno since around late-2018, and so far, the techno community has been most toxic bunch of folks I’ve ever encountered, starting with Rawrave being straight up sabotaged… this was the most painful one, and I still have evidence of everything scattered around my computer lol. But I’ve survived that somehow, it was inexperience, being too naïve… multiple reasons, you name it.

But this continues…

Let’s move away from Skopje, and go to our beloved Prishtina. I’ve had certain techno people from Prishtina use my connections to have this artist who was my friend in Skopje to make a podcast mix on their “platform”, but when it was time to invite him play at their “so open-minded/underground/quirky” club or whatever you wanna call it, they ghosted me, whilst inviting lots of other DJs and artists from Skopje who were simply supported by this shitty “Win Music Freedom” (can be also found as “Different For a Reason” or similar generic nonsense branding) — conglomerate of cigarette companies who have a monopoly in the “clubbing” scene by having influencers play bookers and managers of clubs. What you get is the same elite couple of artists and DJs who’re constantly in rotation play thousands of times, and other artists who aren’t affiliated being straight up ignored. Literally everyone except my friend, who made a podcast for them, got invited. Two years now maybe? LOL.

These same folks have invited me to become part of their own crew as a person to deal with social media, however after I’ve given them my recipe of targeting the audience they were interested in (young partygoers from Skopje and Prishtina), they literally removed my access to their social media pages without any discussion or warning about it. Imagine, I was willingly giving my knowledge to help them bring the audience we’ve gathered as frekvencii.org in an organic way since 2011 for absolutely FREE, and right after they got the *secret formula*, they just removed me hahaha… ⚡️  Now they use the same targeting to put their ads on Facebook and Instagram to promote their raves.

I cannot fantom these egomaniacs and their gatekeeping of electronic music with their neanderthal behavior, because I’ve had much more positive feedback from huge underground clubs in Berlin for example, but when it comes down to creating or suggesting an event here, suddenly it becomes mission impossible.

And there’s a reason for that, it all comes to presumably laundering money through the face of underground music. In Skopje and Tirana the most common “brand” is called “Win Music Freedom”, in Prishtina it’s “Different For A Reason” — they’re literally selling cigarettes, but I suspect their profit comes from washing that green capitalist candy baby, and having “underground” music is literally a genius disguise for this.

It’s the Balkans, it must have politics and corruption, and sadly techno is a victim and being held hostage for years even before I came to the picture and started to innocently spend energy on creating events and trying to connect ravers from the countries here, make my surroundings a better place for all.

In short, we will not support or share any events that are affiliated with clubs or organizers that are run by these cigarette fucks, nor we will share events with the same rotational DJs & artists that those capitalists pigs are pushing. If there is a foreign act which is quality underground and not “soft-disco” shit, if anyone in the frekvencii.org crew likes it, we will share it and support it, but in case the organizers or clubs are affiliated with these cigarette fucks, we’ll warn our ravers that the event in question is being used to sponsor questionable ethics and is contributing to killing the artistry and quality in all electronic music scene of the region. We will link to a detailed report with all connections and knowledge we have of this network. I guess for every 10 naïve ravers who just wanna sniff some drugs and party, there is one who’ll really want to know why everything is shit around us, and why things aren’t changing for years.

Let’s put this on the side for a bit, as it’s really just a tip of the iceberg, and wanted to give you a small glimpse of what’s going on under the “underground techno” face almost everyone is acting around here.

Aside from frekvencii.org, I’ve been producing music for about eleven years, and these last three years I’ve ventured in the world of techno under the moniker of DJ Bazootka, and recently started a label called “Zbazoot” which aims to release absurd, weird, and unique banging old-school flavored techno that doesn’t follow the norm of the industry trends. The label follows the spirit of “socialist” collaboration which is the basis of frekvencii.org, for example in the single “Balkan Blood” we have one of the OG Kosovar techno producers Nani Killa with the crazy sonic terrorist, the Bosnian producer Forest People (aka Oleka), together bringing a thunder of 90/00’s sounding rave weaponry.

Over there, I’ll bring more artists from the Balkans and the world with something a bit different than most of the herd who’s trying to copy Berlin and sound like a repetitive stew of acid feces. This website gives you a free 303/acid generator, it sounds much better than 99% of today’s crap which is released all the time lol.

In a shift of content on frekvencii.org, I will use my own experience and journey in music production expertise to bring people who want to start producing techno or electronic music free resources such as quality sample packs, tutorials, “industry-secrets”, etc. The new content will try to explain all aspects of creating and releasing music in details, and as always with frekvencii.org — it will be free to access, with absolutely no fucking ads on sight.

Because elitism and egoism exist in the producer’s world where talentless fucks make it seem like making music is so special that you need $1000+ hardware to make your shit sound good and spend years in so-called sound-engineering or music schools (what a joke), frekvencii.org will be techno in its purest form, and will give a middle finger to every entitled asshole that thinks he’s an artist just because he spent some capitalist candy on hardware, and will show you how to use the current technology with a bit of creativity in order to express yourself through soundscapes or sound/music.

For those who didn’t know, the word techno comes from technology — and I will make it my mission to bring everyone curious all the resources I have, and give people who love music and are passionate so much they want to explore the idea of creating it, the place of noob-friendly no-judge resources for absolutely free, knowledge that it took years for me to gather. There are going to be budget builds of quality studio-grade monitoring gear and headphones, computer builds, everything you’d need to start producing, all done in a proper ghetto way but with maximum results.

I will try to bring people from the underground techno world who’re now established artists with their very own production tips, ideas and tricks they use, we will analyze legendary and powerful techno tracks and decode arrangements, build-ups, and everything that makes them stand out, and learn how to use that knowledge in our own creations. We will learn sampling, vocal treatment, EQing, compression, mastering, everything technical, but we will start at the very basics of it and go step by step.

Anyways, the whole shit about corruption and politics which I’ve mentioned before will be explained thoroughly when the time comes and I have energy to do that. I believe techno itself is a movement which was born out of rebellion and revolt against the system in times where change was much more than needed. Techno is itself political, and if we don’t take a stand, we’re no different than those cigarette fucks, or the partygoers who only go to techno to do drugs, because it’s cool, and to hunt girls/boys down… because it’s cool, am i right. 🙈 So cool. Cool. 😎

Feel free to reach out on my email with ideas, comments or feedback regarding this.

With love,
Andrijan